by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - A day later, the sting of Kobe Bryant's unflattering comeback game had worn off a bit.

After the ice baths and the late-night film session that is now part of his nightly routine again, the Los Angeles Lakers star who had given himself an F grade for his Sunday night performance against the Toronto Raptors wanted to reassess the situation.

"It wasn't as bad as I thought it was," said Bryant, who returned from his eight-month recovery from an Achilles tendon tear and had nine points on 2-for-8 shooting and eight turnovers in 28 minutes Sunday. "The turnovers and things like that were, a lot of it was just mistiming. We made some pretty good reads. I got my guys some pretty good looks. In terms of the floor game, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was."

So, he was asked, does the grade stand?

"D," he said.

The home schooling continues on Tuesday, as the Lakers host the Phoenix Suns and Bryant's latest test of will and skill continues. Improved grade not withstanding, it's undeniable that the 35-year-old Bryant failed miserably his first shooting guard test against the Raptors' 24-year-old uber-athlete, DeMar DeRozan, who had 26 points, five rebounds and five assists.

"You can tell he's a little rusty," DeRozan told USA TODAY Sports. "He's going to get his legs back under him, get his rhythm. He's going to be fine, man. One thing about him is that he's relentless. Ain't nothing going to slow him down. It was great going out there and playing against him (on Sunday night) It was just great seeing him back out there on the court. I think he's going to be alright."

Next up for Bryant: Goran Dragic, the 27-year-old averaging a career-high 17.7 points and 6.4 assists a game for the surprising 11-9 Phoenix Suns. From there, the Lakers have a four-game road trip through Oklahoma City, Charlotte, Atlanta and Memphis that will reveal far more about Bryant and where this twilight of his career is headed than his lone return game could.

Still, it was a small victory for him that the body was ready to respond the morning after he came back. Having joked Sunday that he'd be sore the day after if only because he is "like 60 (years old)," Bryant said there were no physical setbacks. He'll play again, in other words. Whether he plays well is another story altogether.

"I feel good, feel really good actually, feel better after the game than I even did before, so it feels good," he said. "It's one thing to kind of measure it and kind of guess where you are and you're going out and playing and seeing what you can do and see where you're at now and adjust accordingly."

While Bryant had said that his explosiveness was there in full in his first game back, the naked eye claimed otherwise. He was slow and unsure on the floor, out of rhythm and in trouble offensively for much of the night. But one game is far too soon to decide that he'll be limping humbly into retirement when his recently signed two-year, $48.5 million extension ends, if only because of the point Bryant himself made on Monday.

Ready or not, this is his training camp. And as the past eight months were a process for him to simply get back on the floor, a new one now begins.

"The process is just getting those games in and getting that basketball rhythm," he said. "That's why we have preseason, and I've always had sucky preseasons - always. It's just a matter of just kind of building your legs, finding your rhythm. And so now ... there's a little more pressure obviously than there is in a preseason game, so it requires a little more work between games for me to get ready."

There's more work to be done by coach Mike D'Antoni, too. Having led a merry band of Lakers misfits to a 10-9 record before Bryant's return, he must now balance the desire to not lose the momentum gained without Bryant with the need to make it work now that he's here. And despite Bryant struggling in the fourth quarter that has been his favorite time for nearly two decades now, his role as the team's finisher will remain unchanged.

"It's pretty easy (to balance) in the sense of he's playing (and) that's the way it's going to be, and we know and everybody knows he's got to be the closer," D'Antoni said. "The more times we get him there, the more times he'll be in that position and he'll get closer to doing it. I don't think there's any question about what we need to do. We just got to get better at it."